kiss kiss, fall in love (with a nerd)
by smileyfacebabe
Summary: Sakura was flopped across the bed, hardly moving, and Itachi felt himself panic just a little more. Then she rolled over into his touch and he saw what she had been hiding. (ItaSaku, modern college AU)


Notes From Caitlin: Okay so like. Here. I've read too much manga in the past twelve hours and couldn't write the angst and drama I've been meaning to write for like three days. My entire brain is just bad high school tropes and fluff. But I'm happy. Also go read Say I Love You and come back to me on how fucking great it is. And Shugo Chara! Because like. Fuck me sideways. And stuff.

Dedication: To those of you who like manga and then turn into a floppy useless pile of gooey feelings once you've read them all (like me!). Also to Sonya, because she is my ItaSaku girl, aw yeah.

Disclaimer: I literally own nothing except shame and a cuddly kitten.

* * *

"I wouldn't go in there if I was you."

"Please," Itachi said flatly. "Be more of a cliché. I beg of you. Life is so unexpected that I cherish these moments we share."

Sasuke groaned, burying his hands in his hair. "Why do you have to be so weird," he grumbled at his older brother. "I'm trying to help you!"

"How is advising me not to go into my own room helping me? Unless Deidara has magically gotten over his fear of me and actually managed to prank it-"

Sasuke made an unintelligible noise in the back of his throat and threw his hands in the air. Itachi felt the need to curse the system that selected the dorm rooms for the students at the university and question their sanity all in one breath. This feeling was not uncommon when he ran into his little brother or one of his little brother's friends in the halls.

Who in their right mind put undergrad and graduate students in the same dorm anyway? What sense did that make?

"Sakura's in there and she's being weird," Sasuke said, all in one breath and just barely about a whisper. He glanced around, like his pink haired friend from middle school would appear out of nowhere and slam his head into the wall. Itachi raised an eyebrow, blinking at his rather foolish little brother.

"Weird," Itachi repeated quietly. Sasuke nodded his head frantically.

"The girls all went out shopping, trying to get their minds off studying or something, I don't know exactly, but when Sakura came back she didn't have clothes or jewelry or any of that shit, she had books. Like. A lot of books. And all of a sudden she busts out of her dorm, declares to the common that everyone is a 'loud, dumb, annoying distraction' and storms into your room."

Sasuke paused for a second and seemed to weigh something in his mind. Itachi was tempted to prod him for whatever it was, but he knew his younger brother had to work through whatever it was on his own before he put it into words. Finally, making an expression that one might if they were expecting to be vomited on, Sasuke asked The Question.

"Why does Sakura have a key to your dorm?"

Uchiha Itachi was not one to panic lightly, but he felt the emotion start to coil lightly in his chest. He squashed it down ruthlessly and prayed that his younger brother was smart enough to keep his damn mouth shut. Though the literature grad student highly doubted that, because if he was he would have been able to put the pieces together himself. As it was Itachi cleared his throat, glanced quickly at his door, and pointedly redirected the subject.

"Books," he repeated, as if his younger brother hadn't asked a question and wasn't forming an expression of growing horror. "What sort of books?"

"I don't know," Sasuke yelped. "It's not like I was going to risk my neck and ask her! But, seriously, why the fuck does Sakura have a key to your dorm!"

Itachi considered his options. Then he considered the fact that it wasn't really running away like a coward if he completely and wholeheartedly intended to have this conversation with Sasuke one day. It was… strategic positioning.

"Thank you for this informative conversation, little brother," Itachi said, stepping away from the gaping twenty year old and sliding his key to his dorm into the lock. "But I think I'll take my chances with Sakura and her books."

Sasuke went blue in the face. It was a little odd to watch, considering he was also going red in the face. Itachi was tempted to stay and film it on his phone, as he was sure his brother's facial expressions for the next ten minutes or so would win him Best Funny Moment of the year at the next family gathering- a prize awarded to the family member who could supply the funniest video of another family member; the game had originally been started by Shisui, Itachi's older cousin, and continued faithfully for the last decade and a half- but Itachi really wasn't interested in being shouted at by his younger sibling in a public place. For now the other man would be too terrified f Sakura and her strange mood to bang on his door at least until she was seen leaving, so he had time. Itachi last thought about his annoying younger brother was that he wouldn't call their mother in some kind of half-baked revenge scheme and tell her what he suspected. Then his eyes landed on Sakura's form on his bed and all thoughts that did not involve her promptly flew away.

His backpack hit the floor, lightly so not to startle her. She was sprawled out, legs half off the edge of the bed, shirt twisted and hiked up on her stomach as if she had been rolling around or squirming. Her head was buried in her arms, fingers knotted into the fabric of his sheets with strands of her own brightly colored hair clenched there as well. She wasn't moving and for a long, terrifying second Itachi wasn't sure she was breathing. Then her back rose and fell with one long shuddering breath and Itachi felt himself relax. Then it occurred to him that the breathing pattern Sakura was exhibiting was reminiscent to that of one who had been crying and he rushed across the room, tripping blindly on one of Kisame's biology books, and nearly fell on the bed in his haste to get to her.

"Sakura," he said, fighting to keep calm. "Sakura, are you alright?"

Sakura flinched from his touch before holding still for a long, tense moment. Itachi did not touch her, hand hovering just about her shoulder blade. His thoughts raced ahead of him, jumping from track to track as he fought to figure out what had happened, what had caused Sakura to-

Sakura rolled over, curled against his knee, and then buried her face against his thigh. She mumbled something against his jeans, her arms winding around his waist almost lazily, and then went comfortably still. Itachi froze, confused for a minute, before he recognized the pile of things that had previously been hidden from his view.

Sakura had been lying mostly on top of a pile of brightly colored manga books. Itachi blinked, bent slightly to catch a glimpse of his girlfriend's face, and then had to suppress the urge to chuckle quietly.

"Shut up," Sakura said. She knew him all too well.

"Sasuke said you had been acting odd," Itachi informed her. He was not above selling out his younger brother to save his own hide. Not that his hide was in too much danger, but the sentence made Sakura huff loudly and retract from his thigh a bit so he could see her face.

"Sasuke is an idiot," Sakura grumbled quietly. He suppressed the urge to chuckle again, reaching out to run his fingers through her hair. She all but purred when his nails lightly scratched her scalp and all the tension in her body slipped away, leaving him with a warm lap of pink faced, pink haired girlfriend.

"He knows about us, I think," Itachi murmured. He reached out with his free hand and flicked through the books in the pile Sakura had been flopped across like a dragon with a golden horde. He didn't recognize any of the titles from his own manga reading days, but they all seemed to follow the same sort of theme. There was a brightly colored one staring a character with the same vibrant pink hair as Sakura, called _Shugo Chara!_ and another that looked absolutely horrid that had two people posed toward one another that simply said _Say I Love You_. There were several more in the pile, two large omni-volumes of series that seemed to circle around two girls and something called _Skip Beat_ that Itachi actually fainted remembered. It all seemed terrible and trope-filled and cutesy, so much so that the prospect of reading any of it made him want to scrunch his nose up in distaste.

"You told him," Sakura all but shrieked, or at least attempted to. She was too relaxed and comfortable to really throw her heart behind a true fit, Itachi suspected, so for now they sat, peacefully talking.

"No," Itachi denied. "He saw you use your key to the room and he made assumptions."

Sakura made an unintelligible noise in the back of her throat, much like Sasuke had earlier. "Drat," she muttered. Her fingers twitched against his side. "I mucking ducked up, huh?"

Itachi scoffed, dragging his nails lightly across her scalp until her eyelashes fluttered until he could only see a small sliver of green iris. "No," he said lightly, hunching over to bring his face near hers. "You did not. I do not mind if they know so long as you don't."

Sakura was quiet for a long moment, but Itachi did not mind. It had been a long day of classes and studying and scribbling thesis ideas on pieces of paper that would eventually become cluttered and misplaced and then found out of order. But then Sakura drew further back, propping herself up on one arm, her finger curling around his knee as she moved to sit up next to him.

"I don't mind," she muttered, almost shyly. "I just-"

Unlike his brother Sakura did not need an age and a half to gather her thoughts. "You just what," Itachi prodded quietly, curling his arm around her and dragging her against his side. Her head fell to his shoulder and Itachi twisted them both so that they were lying diagonally across his bed, the pile of manga at her side.

"This is your last chance to get rid of me before everyone finds out and makes a big deal out of it," Sakura said in a rush. She opened her mouth like she was going to say more, but then she squeezed her eyes closed and went limp against him. Itachi sighed quietly, something sad and lonely stirring in his chest. He looked for the words to make her understand that this was what he wanted, but he could not think of anything that didn't sound terrible and awkward and over-the-top. Then he glanced at the pile of books behind her and took a deep breath to say them anyway.

"For someone who's studying literature, I'm not a master of spoken word," he started quietly. "I cannot give you a big, flowery speech on how I need you, because that is not my way." Sakura shifted against him, but he held onto her, head tipping down so that he could stare into her eyes. "But I can tell you that the only way you are ridding yourself of me, Haruno Sakura, is by a clear and precisely worded statement declaring that you no longer wish me to be in your life. Until you give me such a statement I am yours. I do not wish to be anywhere but here, with you. Do you understand me?"

Sakura smiled a small wobbly sort of smile at him before twisting on her side and burrowing against him. "Yeah," she muttered, fingers fisting in his shirt. "Same to you, okay?"

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Okay," he agreed quietly. They fell asleep on his bed like that, turned the wrong way around, and did not wake up until Itachi's marine biology major roommate returned to the room and jolted them both awake with a loud, boisterous cry.

"Holy shit," Kisame shouted, "is that _Skip Beat_? I fucking love _Skip Beat_!"


End file.
